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Relevant or Current?

This entry is part 25 of 48 in the series

"Ten Mangled Words"

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When some people speak of the importance of relevance, they don’t mean relevance at all. After all, relevant, strictly speaking, merely means ‘pertinent to the matter at hand’. Relevance needs an object: relevant to whom or what matter?, we may ask.

The fact that some people use the word relevant as a quality not requiring modification demonstrates that they really mean something else by it. One particular usage is perhaps the most common: describing whatever is current as ‘relevant’. If something is current, it could have several qualities. It could be something currently in use. It could mean it is a new development. It could mean it is fashionable, trendy, en vogue. It could mean it has been adopted by the youth, the trend-setters, the celebrities (those famous for being famous). Yet all of these share one unquestioned value in the minds of the relevance-devotees: novelty is good.

Ours is a world where “new!” on the product’s packaging boosts sales. “Brand new season” is supposed to invite wide-eyed excitement. “Never before seen” is a moniker of greatness. We check our phones for updates hourly. We want to know the latest. News that is ‘breaking’ is important. “A new development” in the story is supposed to firm up its sagging relevance. This is the age where the new is true, and the true is new. Only the recent is decent.

We shouldn’t be surprised. If Darwinism is true, then the latest development is always the most advanced. If science is man’s savior, then the newest gadget is necessarily the best. In such a world, you are permitted to say these words with a sneering disdain: old, tradition, custom.

Actually, the logic behind equating relevant with current contains three premises.
1) We need to bring practical value to this world.
2) What is of practical value to this generation must be current.
3) We are only relevant to the degree we are current.

With some qualification, the first premise is hardly objectionable. The second is the most problematic, but it represents the spirit of the age. Our culture practices chronological snobbery, a term coined by C.S. Lewis and defined by him as, “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”

Lewis goes on: “You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also ‘a period,’ and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”

The Christian view of reality in considerably different. The fifth commandment itself, in commanding reverence and obedience to parents, is implicitly demanding respect for the past: honoring the accumulated wisdom of one’s parents gained in the decades they are in advance of you. And to be sure, their wisdom was not self-taught, but came from their parents, who received some from theirs, so that we find the command to honor one’s immediate parents is really a command to honor one’s ancestors. God’s people were even to honor ancient landmarks, to rise in the presence of the aged, to regard the gray head as a sign of gathered wisdom. So convinced were the Jewish people of the value of tradition, that Christ had to confront them with their unwarranted obedience to man-made traditions. This seems a far cry from modern evangelicalism, with its anti-traditional tradition. At least we can say that enough Christian voices are out there reminding believers that a church with no understanding of the past is amnesiac.

While no Christian would argue the importance of bringing value to the world, a Christian steeped in Scripture recognizes the difference between what is permanent and what is current. Permanent things may or may not be currently popular (2 Timothy 4:2-4). But what is true, good, and beautiful is permanently pertinent to the life and well-being of a creature made in God’s image. Something current, on the other hand, may be one of countless spasmodic experiments in novelty that a godless culture will produce. The church that weds itself to a particular generation finds itself a widow in the next. Nothing is as irrelevant as a trendy church.

Those who build with gold, silver, and precious stones, are permanently relevant. Those enamored with the wood, hay and stubble of the fashions of the day, may find little is left of their ministry at the Judgement Seat of Christ.

David de Bruyn pastors New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary and Minnesota and the University of South Africa (D.Th.). Since 1999, he has presented a weekly radio program that is heard throughout much of central South Africa. He also blogs at Churches Without Chests.